Your Echo (not yet available to the public on general sale, but a number of people have them, including me, when they opened it to invitation only sales) can now read you your Audible audiobooks!

Now, some of you might be surprised that I’m excited by that. Regular readers know I great prefer to listen to text-to-speech (TTS…software reading a book out loud to you) as opposed to audiobooks…unless I’ve already read the book.

For me, an audiobook is like a movie: it gives me someone else’s interpretations of the characters. Even when the person reading the audiobook is the author, I prefer to layer that onto the words myself.

Listening to TTS is, for me, like sight-reading…reasonably neutral. Yes, there are some mistakes (is “lives” the plural of “life” or a verb, for example?), but that’s akin to typos in a p-book (paperbook)…I do okay with those in both formats.

So, there are definitely times I might want the Echo to read me a book I’ve already read.

If you go into your Echo app (you probably have it on your phone, but you could be getting to it on a computer at http://echo.amazon.com), you’ll now see “Audible” as a choice in your menu.

“Audible” is an audiobook company, owned by Amazon.

Even though I’ve almost never bought an audiobook, I have 41 books there. That’s from free audiobooks, often that you can get because you bought the e-book.

If I want to hear Tim Curry reading A Christmas Carol, for example, I can now ask the Echo to play that for me.

This also works with Audible books you have with many books you may have borrowed from

Skipping chapter is not currently supported by voice. You can skip chapters using the Echo app.

It will, by the way, know where you were in the book…even if you were sight-reading the e-book (if it’s Whispersync for Voice compatible).

By the time the Echo is released for general purchase (I’m guessing that’s in July), it will be quite impressive and even practical.

I guess I should say a quick word about what the Echo is. It’s an “ambient computing” device. You are using it somewhat like you would use Siri on your iPhone, but it’s always on and available. It can hear you quite well…across a room, perhaps in other rooms (and the latter definitely with an included remote).

Will it become part of your life?

I think so. It has recently been passing a test of that for me. :) I find myself wanting to use it when it isn’t available. In other words, I spontaneously see a use for it, not just when I see it or consciously think of it.

For example, I got out of the shower this morning, and wanted to hear the news. I’m away from my Echo right now, but I just wanted to say, “Alexa, what’s the news?” I would have heard a summary from several sources, some of it in recorded human voices, some of it via text-to-speech. Instead, I had to go into a different room and turn on the TV for CNN. That doesn’t sound like much, but it was an inconvenient time.

More than once, I’ve wanted to ask the Echo for weather information when it wasn’t available.

Oh, I’ve also now reordered something using the Echo. That worked just fine. It’s really a remarkable product:

We have animals around our house. We aren’t in the wilds, we’re in a suburb…but there is open space not far from us. We don’t see raccoons at our house, for example, but they might get under the deck. All of this gets our terriers really going: that’s part of why we are having somebody do yard clean-up right now. That should reduce unwanted animals. Oh, and I just found out one of our neighbors had a family of red foxes under their house! As the California drought continues, we’ll see a lot more of this…particularly, cougars in the suburbs.

This product is just like a regular kitchen garbage bag…but it smells like mint. The smell is somewhat strong at first, but not unpleasant.

We had a spot where there was a rat hole, and I tried a few things. Just sticking one of these bags in the rat hole worked! No sign of them at that hole again (which I had even covered up with aluminum foil previously, which often works…they chewed through that).

I was told what the cost of reordering the bags was going to be (you can currently only reorder Prime eligible products…not order something new, and not something which isn’t Prime) and could have declined. Interestingly, despite what I just said, this order wasn’t Prime…but had been last time, I think. It still ordered it.

Let me share with you a suggestion I’ve made to Amazon (through the Echo app), which I think could be huge for them.

I suggested that they let us give items we’ve ordered “friendly names”…”Pat’s vitamins”, “Mint garbage bags”, “Fluffy’s favorite cat toy”, and so on). That’s especially useful for the Echo, but would also be valuable for searching orders at the website

It would greatly add to “stickiness” for Amazon customers as well. You might not even remember the formulation of those vitamins (although it would give you the official name when you reordered it as part of the confirmation), which would make you less likely to want to go somewhere else. If you had one hundred of those (we could have that), recreating it would be a bear, even if another site allowed it.

I told them I’d like to be able to retroactively go back through my previous orders and add those names.

We’ll see if we get it. :)

Until then, for those of you who can, enjoy your Echo reading you a book around the house!

Whoops, one last thing: at this point, the Echo doesn’t have a sleep timer…so if you start it reading a book and then fall asleep, I assume it would just keep going until the book finished. I suspect a sleep timer is coming…

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

It’s sort of an authorized “biography” of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series. The author had official access to materials (and people). At times, we actually get a day by day description of what was happening…and why.

loan, covered byour free month (and it would have been part of my $9.99 a month after that).

The author says:

“In the latter half of Day 4 and for the first half of Day 5 the action moved to sickbay, where the world gets its first glimpse of an ebook (as Gary Mitchell reads from a video screen)…”

While I might quibble with that statement (I pointed out a reference to a “pocket reading machine” in 1945 in Flash! Kindles foretold in 1945), I did want to go back and see that scene, to see just how close it was to how e-books are today**.

is available for me to watch as part of Prime video at no additional cost. We are Prime members, and one of the benefits of that is being able to watch a lot of videos which are covered by our annual fee.

I did do that…but I had to go to one of my devices and look up the episode.

What would be really cool is if I could highlight the name of the episode in the e-book, and it just automatically took me to the Amazon Instant Video product page, where I could watch it. Having to go look for it is a barrier.

Now, I realize that some of you may think that my title for this post doesn’t apply, here because: I’m only borrowing the video, not buying it; and I’m not paying anything additional for it.

I think the same concept applies. I’m doing a “secondary buy”. Amazon wants me to “buy” Prime (they really, really want that…they are spending tons of money getting people to do that), and to remain a Prime member. Having me enjoy Prime is part of that, and getting me easily to a video I want to watch is a way to get me to enjoy it.

I’d also like to see them tell me how much money I saved…like I get at the end of my Safeway grocery receipt.

They don’t have to show me a running total (which could conceivably disappoint some people), but popping something up that says I saved $2.99 by watching this as part of my Prime (as opposed to buying it) would be nice and a validation for me to be in the program. The same thing should happen when I order a physical object with Prime…let me know what the two-day shipping would have been.

Oh, and even the highlighting could be easier. If I press one word in a title, there could be logic to look to see if that is part of an italicized phrase, in quotations, or part of a group of words in “Title Case” (all major words capitalized). It might have to offer the full selection (in case you were trying to look up one word in a quotation in a book), but I think it’s entirely doable.

The key thing here is that Amazon needs a search from within content for things it can sell you or secondarily sell you.

If one book mentions another book, let me jump to it with the option to borrow/read it.

If a book mentions a person, let me jump from that name to a store at Amazon…and a complete store, not just one kind of content.

If you click that link, it takes you to Amazon’s author page for Takei, which has a bio, a picture, latest tweet, blogposts…but no links to videos, games, clothing, and so on featuring the actor.

Absolutely, give me a way to filter to just books if I want (and they do let you filter by book format now), but give me a hub to everything Takei.

This should even work for non-brand names.

If I’m reading about somebody eating trail mix, I should be able to highlight that and be taken to a search at Amazon for trail mix.

Here’s another idea.

If a book mentions “…great movies of the 1930s”, and I choose to pursue that, first check for books or content with that phrase in the title. Then, do a search (using Silk) on the web. Here’s the kicker: give me a choice to filter to Amazon results.

So, the search finds The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

The “Amazon results” search then reenters those names into the content search at Amazon…and bam! I can get them there.

That’s because they have a nice feature that works there…and doesn’t work in other browsers (I have Maxthon, my browser of choice) added to the phone.

When you are on a website, you can tip the phone back to scroll. The steeper the tip, the faster the scroll. It’s surprisingly nice to be able to scroll without touching the screen. The Fire Phone specializes in “no touch navigation”…which really does keep the screen considerably cleaner.

That’s a feature that is getting me to use Silk…having Amazon search results, reached intuitively and conveniently from my content would be another…and would result in more sales and borrows (and thus, enhanced loyalty) from Amazon.

These sorts of things should also happen when I’m watching video. See a TV character wearing a piece of clothing you want? I’d love to be able to ask my device to note it, and maybe find it for me later on Amazon. On a touchscreen device, it might be a question of tapping the clothing. When you wanted, it would ask you if you wanted more information on the actor, on what they were wearing, on the profession the person represented, on the character…lots of possibilities.

Is any of this easy?

No, and I understand that.

Would it make me even more bonded to Amazon? Without a doubt.

Bonus deal:Amazon had a deal yesterday with $20 off lots of “flavors” of the Paperwhite. Today, there is a one day deal with a much bigger savings: $130 off this specific model of

That’s just for the 32 GB version (with or without Special Offers).That brings it down to $299 (from $429) with Special Offers for this 8.9″ screen version of the latest Kindle Fire.

It also oddly makes the 32GB less expensive than the 16GB right now.

Check the price before you click that Buy button: this may not apply in your country, or you may see this after today’s sale has ended.

What do you think? How could Amazon be further integrated into your life…and should it be? Would “smart link shopping” be an attractive thing to you? Do you think you would buy more things from Amazon if it was even easier? Would you want to see a “you saved” statement? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

** There’s no arguing that Mitchell is reading e-books…and yes, that includes classics. The mechanism isn’t like a Kindle…it’s more like the Kindle for PC app, reading them on a pretty large screen. Each book appears to come on a separate “tape”, and they do have a reference to page numbers. It doesn’t appear that the Enterprise has all that many books. Mitchell reads “half the library”, in what is clearly a fast time, but not super fast…and we see how quickly the “esper” can turn pages.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

In fact, it’s big enough that companies tie into it with merchandise/content sales…and not just on comics.

The con itself certainly goes beyond comic books/graphic novels. Some old timers complain that it has become too much about movies and TV…even ones that aren’t even especially geeky (and I use that adjective as a proud geek).

This is Batman’s 75th anniversary year..the Dark Knight (or Caped Crusader…depends a bit on your perspective) debuted in what is sometimes considered the best pop culture year, 1939.

Batman (along with Superman) certainly seems to have taken some inspiration from Doc Savage (Doc was a wealthy crimefighter with specialized vehicles and equipment…including a “utility vest”, which arguably became Batman’s utility belt), but that’s another story. :)

There have been some Batman graphic novels that are really considered classic by Batman fans…and yes, they are included here for $2.99 each.

That includes:

Batman: The Dark Knight by Frank Miller

Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore

If you’ve never read a graphic novel, I’d recommend The Dark Knight…and warn you ahead of time, those two in particular are not written for children.

Amazon allows us to install apps from “unknown sources” on our Kindle Fires, but you have to make the call. Since the app won’t have been reviewed by Amazon to make sure it is safe and that it works on the KFire, you take responsibility for that.

This is one where I would feel comfortable getting it, and I have gotten things for my KFire from 1Mobile before.

I didn’t talk about using Prime Music, but I have used it sporadically…I sometimes write with it on, for example.

It looks like Prime Music has been quite successful. Adding hundreds of thousands of songs to it is great! I haven’t been terribly impressed with their playlists, although it is nice to have fifty songs of one genre play with one selection. I’m just not sure that I’m seeing genuine creativity n how songs are grouped together in the playlists. I some cases, they seem a bit more like…search results, rather than curated music lists.

For example, the press release mentions one called “Fire for Your Fire”, and describes it as “Odes to all things fire make perfect listening on your Fire Phone or Kindle Fire”. I’m guessing that it’s just a bunch of songs with “fire” in the title, although I’m not seeing it yet on the site.

Curation seems to be better at Songza, but this is new for Amazon. One thing they could do is let customers share playlists, then have people “like” them…and with enough likes, a playlist moves up into a better discovery spot. That would create social engagement, and probably result in better playlists.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The article, which seems to uncritically accept what one party in the situation says, starts with:

“Amazon has begun discouraging customers from buying books by Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Colbert, J. D. Salinger and other popular writers, a flexing of its muscle as a battle with a publisher spills into the open.”

Are you sure you don’t want to throw an “allegedly” or “reportedly” in there?

I mean, this is the New York Times, right? Not some anonymous book blog?

The gist of the story is that Amazon is REPORTEDLY deliberately keeping low stock on some Hachette p-books (paperbooks), which results in waits of two weeks or more for customers to get them.

Before I start commenting on this, let me say that my background might paint me as prejudiced…on one side or the other. ;) I was a brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, so that might put me in Amazon’s camp (since they are, in this instance a book retailer). I am also not an Amazon employee, but I have gotten money from them (royalties, for one thing).

On the other hand, I am (in a very small way) a publisher. I’ve published my own titles to the Kindle store…and Amazon could certainly mess me up if it chose to do that.

Okay, with that out of the way…

My first question is…is it true?

First, I did a search for Grand Central (one of Hachette’s imprints…and one suggested by the article) print books at Amazon.com:

Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks (Buvette: The Pleasure of Good Food by Jody Williams and Mario Batali)

No delay

Pre-order

No delay

No delay

Well, there are some books there with a significant delay.

My next question: are the books delayed at Amazon also delayed at Barnes & Noble?

Assuming that “usually ships within 24 hours” means that they don’t expect a delay, the answer was no…for all four of these.

Next, I’ll try some Random House titles, to see if they also have significant delays. I checked the top twenty Random House books, using the same technique I did for Grand Central: no delays.

So, tentatively at this point, I’ll say the evidence supports Hachette’s reported contention…Amazon may in fact be understocking Hachette’s books.

“Understocking?”

By that I mean that they aren’t keeping enough in stock to meet customer demand and get them delivered in a c0uple of days.

Why would that be the case?

It could be a deliberate bargaining tactic, as the stories suggest. The idea is that by delaying delivery, they are hurting Hachette.

However, wouldn’t that also hurt Amazon? The way they would be hurting the publisher is by reducing the sales…which also hurts Amazon.

I never think it’s a good tactic to annoy your customers to get back at your suppliers…I didn’t like it when stores did it to Amazon by not carrying Amazon’s traditionally published books, for example.

I think there might be a couple of other possible explanations.

One is that Amazon just blew it on the ordering. Certainly, that happened sometimes in my store. We way over-ordered on a Suzanne Summers book…because she lived in the area and we thought there would be a lot of interest. Maybe Robin Roberts got more publicity than they expected?

I don’t really think that’s likely. I think Amazon is generally good at ordering…and it would be pretty fluky if they just happened to be one publisher’s books (unless that publisher did something unexpected in terms of publicity).

Another one is that Amazon is experimenting…maybe trying to drive customers to e-books instead. In a case like that, they might pick one publisher’s books, or books that fit a certain profile (which might, coincidentally, align with a publisher’s content choices).

I would consider that…possible. Amazon has more (and I would guess increasingly) control in the e-book market than they do in the p-book market (although they are a major player there too, of course…and perhaps, becoming even more powerful as B&N wobbles on the edge of a cliff).

This might also simply be a way to try to cut costs and up profits…Roger Knights, one of my regular readers and commenters, had a strongly correct prediction about e-book prices rising at Amazon.

It costs money to store books. Every day a book sits in your warehouse (or back room, in a bookstore the size of the one I ran), you lose money on the sale. Maybe that’s making Amazon take more chances with low stock…and if Hachette’s return policies aren’t as friendly as other publishers, that could make them more likely to be hit by it…that’s just speculation, though.

Let’s sum this up:

Books unavailable? That’s a bad thing.

Is Amazon at fault here? I think that’s the most likely scenario.

What’s the plus side (there is always a plus side)? I suppose it might accelerate the shift to e-books, which I do see generally as a good thing (they are more accessible, less expensive for the most part, and as I understand it, more ecologically friendly).

If Hachette decides it needs to go more directly to readers, that’s very much more likely to be with e-books than p-books. Amazon is a behemoth in delivery, and does it for a lot of other companies. It would be very hard for a publisher to start doing D2R (Direct To Readers) with p-books…but a snap (logistically…marketing is a different question) with e-books.

has two additional accusations against Amazon…claiming two more tactics against Hachette use by the e-tailer.

One is higher prices.

The other one, more intriguing, is running banner ads on a book’s Amazon product page…recommending similar, less expensive books.

That latter one, if true (and my intuition, without additional evidence, is that the story wouldn’t include this if it wasn’t), changes the math.

It would mean that Amazon could actually profit by reducing the sales of the Hachette books. Readers could be directed to books with more favorable terms..perhaps ones published by Amazon itself.

Nothing illegal about that…I wouldn’t even say it is unethical.

But it is sneaky. ;)

This second article focuses on how authors are hurt in these sorts of “spats”…certainly, that’s a motivation for them to publish independently in the future. Is that good for Amazon? Sure, that’s where most of them would indie publish!

Is that the real goal? Get authors out of publishers completely, and into controlling their own destinies…but using Amazon’s distribution platform?

Hmmmmmm….

Customers, of course, are also hurt by this…that’s where I would advise Amazon to be careful, if they are doing this at all. Even if a customer can get a cheaper (perhaps even better) alternative, most of them won’t get that emotionally. They’ll just get that Amazon doesn’t have the book they wanted it, when they wanted it, at the price they wanted.

That’s the sort of mistake Amazon hasn’t tended to make in the past…I hope they don’t let pressure for greater profits make them change their three core values: price; service; and selection.

What do you think? How bad is this? If this is Amazon’s fault, would that surprise you? Do you see it as part of a general trend? If the move towards popular reading being done with e-books rather than p-books accelerates, do you think that’s a good thing? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Of course, nowadays, we may not even see the same cover for an e-book we are going to buy.

I haven’t heard about this happening, yet, but I certainly anticipate it.

As you shop in different sections of a site, the cover for the same book might change its appearance to match the section. A Christian mystery might have a conservative cover in the Christian fiction section, and a flashier one in the Mystery section.

That idea just occurred to me, but it fits right in with a book I’ve just read:

and which I do recommend (I’ll write a review of it on Goodreads). They are talking about the convergence of five forces in technology (mobile, big data, sensors, location, and social media) and how they will create a context society, where our devices (and organizations) know much more about who we are and what we are doing, and tailor communications to match.

In fact, there is probably a real opportunity for a business there (if not for Amazon itself). Something that can algorithmically customize covers. I would think it might be very effective for the system to go find a picture of you (on a profile or on the web) and subtly merge elements of your appearance with that of a cover character. When that sort of morphing has been done, people tend to find the morphed picture (which they don’t know was morphed) to be a lot more trustworthy. I also saw something recently about people on dating sites tending to pick “themselves” more often.

Sure, we would sometimes want to see something exotic…and might not want to be the murderer on the cover. If, though, you stuck somebody in the background that had the morphing done, I bet that would work.

When the Fire TV was first released, there were a lot of very low starring reviews based on the fact that it didn’t have HBO Go. There were one and two star reviews…from people who didn’t even have the device yet.

I can absolutely see saying that it didn’t serve your purposes at that point, so you weren’t going to buy it yet…but that’s a very fluid characteristic on which to judge a gadget.

One of the interesting things is that Amazon included HBO GO in its comparison table…showing that they didn’t have it.

Your customers still have to have a subscription to HBO through a TV provider (like a cable company, or satellite) to use it…so you are making money from it.

Amazon wants to license it for their new streaming device, the Fire TV. It will attract customers to their gadget.

Your reasonable response might be, “What’s it worth to you?”

Makes some sense in the beginning… you don’t even know how many people are going to buy one until it is released.

Naturally, if a lot of people start using them and it starts cutting into the market for other boxes (the Roku, for example), that might shift some of the balance of power to Amazon. If people buy the Fire TV and you aren’t on it, they might decide they just don’t need you any more.

That’s not in the beginning, though…you might be able to wait to see what happens.

Would Amazon like to have had it at launch? Sure, but they can’t hold up the whole product waiting for one license. According to the documents in the Apple Agency Model conviction (for fixing prices), Apple was trying to negotiate quickly to get enough of the big publishers on board for iBooks when the iPad came out. That haste might have contributed to the eventual woes (with five publishers settling, and Apple losing…although they have appealed).

Personally, I’m not a cynical person. I tend to think good things about people and organizations.

I don’t quite get the cynical attitude. It would be like…putting shoe polish on your tongue before you went to dinner: it would just make everything taste bad. ;)

That doesn’t mean I was surprised when people said that Amazon’s voice search on the Fire TV only worked on Amazon Instant Video because they don’t want you to use competitors.

Amazon seems to be fine with you using competitors…you can get apps for your Kindle Fire from Amazon for direct competitors, such as

Does it seem logical that they would let you use the app on the Fire TV, and then block you from using the voice search for those apps (even though you can key in a search), in an attempt to keep you from using them?

The voice search needs its own negotiation.

Why?

You need access to the company’s product database, which changes every day.

Amazon has signed deals with Hulu Plus, Crackle, and Showtime to have the voice search work with their catalogs later this year.

I’m sure they are working on Netflix, too.

Oh, and I should point out, not all the competitors return the favor by featuring Amazon in their stores. Many bookstores have refused to carry books published by Amazon. Google Play still doesn’t recognize the Kindle Fire as a device…my best guess is that Google is making that choice. After all, we can commonly get apps that are at Google Play from other (legal) sources for the Fire (including Amazon’s own Appstore, and 1Mobile.com). I doubt Amazon is choosing to stay out of the Google Play store online (their Kindle reader app is available there, after all). Now, Amazon might not want to pay some fee to put Google Play directly on their devices…but the forked nature of the Android version Amazon is using might also have something to do with that.

If I don’t think you should judge a box by its content, do I think it is okay to judge it by its interface? After all, that could change in the future too, right?

Well, I do think that’s different. The interface (how a user interacts with it) not only tells you about how they feel about customers, they can largely develop the feel of it in house. They don’t have to negotiate with somebody to have a way to remove something from the “Recent” (which the Fire TV has). If something had an interface that made you put in, or, your astrological sign each time you wanted to do something, I could see saying that made it a less desirable device.

I would judge a gadget by:

The hardware specifications (does it have the power and connectors you want?)

The company’s Customer Service

The strength of the company

The interface

The openness

The compatibility with other things you own…at lest the philosophy of that. That one could change, though

Oh, and yeah, sure…the coolness factor. ;)

Last point: I’m not saying you should buy something that doesn’t have what you want. Not buying it is not the same as denigrating it…

What do you think? How does Amazon treat its competitors on its devices and on its website? What do you look at before you buy a product? Would you write a bad review of something, because it didn’t have a license you wanted? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

They also have an e-mail address you can use to send feedback to them:

kindle-feedback@amazon.com

However, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a post, from time to time, to just give them some ideas. If they use them, great…if not, I understand. :) I do think some folks at Amazon read this blog, although I don’t think I have any particular influence with them.

If you like any of these, you are welcome to send them to Amazon as well (in your own words, of course) at the above address.

Let me say first that this would not currently work on non-Fire Kindles. Not just because you couldn’t install it, but because the refresh speed on the screen technology just isn’t fast enough.

You could, though, do it on a Fire.

I’m proposing that Amazon have it as an option on the Fire.

Why not just have the app in the store?

I assume the app wouldn’t work with a Kindle store book (DRM…Digital Rights Management and all that). Amazon would have to license it, or in some other legal way get an equivalent tech, and have it work with Kindle store books.

I don’t think they would need the publishers’ permission: they wouldn’t be changing the file, just the display, as I understand it.

One would also think that publishers would want people to be able to read their books more quickly (so the customer wants another book sooner), but they are hard to predict. Text-to-speech also considerably speeds up consumption of a book (since you can listen in the car), but some publishers take steps to block that in some books.

Suggested feature: Daltonizer

I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it could be a killer app for a certain segment of the population, and would be seen as being community minded.

Again, this would be for the Fire, since it requires color.

There are apps (I have one one my phone) that can shift colors to make them easier for people with color vision deficiency (I have some) to see them.

You’d be surprised how many people that is!

It’s not uncommon that I’ll get an e-mail saying, “We’re doing the green ones, we aren’t doing the red ones, we might do the black ones,” and I can’t tell which is which.

There are also cases where I can’t read the lettering in an Excel cell or on a PowerPoint slide because of the font/fill color combination.

Amazon could include a “Daltonizer” color changer on the Fire. Again, I don’t think any publisher permission would be required. You simply identify your deficiency to the device (the app could test you, if you didn’t know), and it color shifts the display for you.

That would make the decision for some people as to which device to get, and would likely be well-received by some disability advocates.

Suggested strategy: discounts for you

Safeway, the grocery store we used, recently updated their app so it really works for us, and Amazon could do something similar.

The idea is this: you get personalized coupons.

Sure, you see the other coupons, too, but what if you saw something like this?

“10% off the new Janet Evanovich book…you’ve purchased that author’s books in the past”

You would want it to look like it was special for you…different coupons for different people. Obviously, there would be more than one Janet Evanovich fan, but you get the idea.

The price for most people might be $9.99…but you get it for $8.99.

By making the coupons last for a limited time (that’s what Safeway does), Amazon could impact the sales pattern of books.

Publishers might particularly like this. It wouldn’t change the apparent price of the book in the market (they don’t like that…bad comparison for paperbooks), but would encourage purchasing. It could even “manipulate” getting something on the bestseller list.

In fact, that’s one way to go! Amazon could make this a deal with publishers using their Kindle Direct Publishing (like me). The publisher could elect to let Amazon discount the book only for prior purchasers for a certain amount of time.

Amazon could tie that into the KDP Select program…only valid while the book is exclusive to Amazon, perhaps.

This would allow Amazon to really leverage their data.

Would it make customers more loyal?

You betcha!

They could use this not just with authors, but with things like genres. That could encourage you to buy, say, an alternate history book from a different author and/or publisher…and Amazon could get a deal from the publisher for that reason (sort of advertising supported).

I really think this would work!

They could also let you put it on a Wishlist (Safeway lets you put the discount on your card), and make that public…again, with the discount for, perhaps, a limited time.

I think this would be an excellent use of big data by Amazon, and exactly a way to swing purchasers to tighten the bond.

I’m always curious what you think, though, so as part of this feature, I’m going to include a poll:

If you have additional suggestions, or comments on these, feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

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Nominate a child to be given a free Kindle at Give a Kid a Kindle. Last weekend to recommend one of the current nominees to get the Kindle!

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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Nominating comments can be made now (see that page for more information), and I will begin displaying those nominations (which may be edited) on the page in January.

Readers will be able to recommend a child for the Kindle in March of 2014, by using a poll which will be on that page.

There is no charitable organization involved in this, and there won’t be any tax write-offs associated with it…it’s just something that I want to do personally (and I’ve discussed with my Significant Other, of course).

I’ve tried to keep this simple. I just want to do something nice. :)

I think reading is important, and that readers can (but don’t have to) change the world.

I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions you have for this. I can certainly see some challenges in doing it…

Amazon promises Silk “accordion” fix

It has seemed pretty obvious lately that Amazon needs to do more testing before they release updates.

Don’t get me wrong, I love getting free updates with new functionality! It’s just that you don’t want them to make things worse. That’s clearly how some people are feeling about Amazon’s updates…I know of people saying that they are afraid to turn on the wireless, because they don’t want to get a new update.

Recently:

A Kindle Fire update appears to have made wireless connections unstable…I have to frequently toggle the wireless on and off now

The introduction of Cloud Collections to the Kindle Paperwhite in a recent update has been widely criticized as confusing and unwieldy

An update to the Silk browser caused pages to “accordion” as you scrolled, making it impossible to read them

They’ve said that a fix has been released, and that the Fire should automatically update within the next few days.

I really appreciate that Amazon employees will go into a public forum and make a statement like that…but it would be better if the problems were discovered pre-release, and fixed.

I’m guessing that when Amazon gets a little distance on all this after the holiday season, they’ll re-evaluate their quality control and testing for updates. That might mean we get them farther apart, but I think that would be worth it.

Hugh Howey writing in the world of Kurt Vonnegut

My feeling is that Kindle Worlds has been a bit slow getting off the ground. This is Amazon’s bold venture to mainstream fanfic (“fan fiction”), in a sense, by licensing properties from the rightsholders and then letting anyone write within those worlds (within certain guidelines), and splitting the royalties.

The bestselling Kindle Worlds books tend not to break the top 10,000 in the Kindle store. That doesn’t mean that can’t be profitable and popular, but my intuition is that Amazon would like more out of the program.

Part of this is chicken or the egg: they may need hits to get people interested in the program, and people need to be interested in the program to write those hit titles.

Well, this title should help.

Hugh Howey (at AmazonSmile) is a best-selling (New York Times and USA Today) science fiction author. I’m reading Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo Saga) (at AmazonSmile) myself, although it’s not first in line for me (I’m reading a galley copy of something right now, as part a “beta reader”, and then there is always the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library book to finish). My guess is that I’ll finish the five books in the next few months.

Howey is writing a Kindle Worlds’ title in the world of Kurt Vonnegut:

Howey’s books are well-reviewed on Amazon, and this announcement has gotten some media play. It’s an interesting mix of inspiration (Slaughterhouse-Five (at AmazonSmile)) (which is only $2.50 at time of writing) and author. Howey had a personal experience with the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, which may certainly inform this piece.

Janet Dailey reported dead

We sold a lot of Janet Dailey (at AmazonSmile) when I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore…and we certainly weren’t the only ones.

Reportedly, the author’s books sold something like 300 million copies, certainly making the romance novelist one of the best-selling novelists of any kind.

Amazon lists over 100 Janet Dailey titles in the Kindle store, including at least some of the Americana series (Dailey wrote a novel for each state).

Dailey began writing in the 1970s, and the latest book from the author was published this year.

which shows you how much Herman Melville got paid for writing. While not complete, let’s just say that the figures might be surprising…you do have to remember that we aren’t talking about constant dollars, though. Money went further back then. Still, being an author is rarely one of the best paid occupations.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

I do believe they want to be better. Amazon is constantly changing and updating things. A lot of the innovation this year has been around new services and savings, more than around new hardware. As an existing customer, that’s how you want it to be. Making what you already own better…at no additional cost? Great.

There are, though, some definite areas for improvement.

I’m going to list a few year. As always, you can comment on the post to add your own. My hope here is that Amazon is moving in these directions, and is aware of the concerns. If they aren’t, well, this might be like an ant trying to move a rubber tree plant, as the old song goes…but remember, in the song, that plant does move. :)

What’s in a name?

The Bard of Avon wasn’t saying that names are irrelevant. Sure, a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, but the last names that Romeo and Juliet had indicated a lot about them…and that’s where the problems happened.

People assume that, if you name something, you are conveying meaning inherent to that thing. When the name and the meaning don’t align, it’s confusing and offputting.

We can go back to the beginning of the “Kindle”, more than six years ago now.

Many people didn’t like the name. People (properly) associated “kindling” with “burning”…and disrupting the book industry by associating books with burning was not a good thing. Amazon put out something explaining that they meant it like “kindling passion”…getting something started, rather than destroying it. Paperbooks and flames, though? Not a good association.

Okay, that’s just a case of how the name of a thing that people were seeing for the first time was perceived: just a first impression.

People got past that. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are young people who first associate the word “Kindle” with a book-reading device, rather than with burning things.

However, it then started to get confusing.

Rather than naming the next generation Kindle a “Kindle 2″, or something like that (officially, anyway), Kindles have been named…”Kindle”. Now, the current “entry level” Kindle (which I call a “Mindle”) doesn’t have much in common with the 2007 device…but according to Amazon’s naming conventions, they should be identical.

You could, of course, argue that a Ford Mustang is called a Ford Mustang every year, but it’s not…they add the model year to it. I can understand not wanting to name your e-book reading devices with the year, but I think a serial naming sequence (“Kindle 1″, “Kindle 2″) would make sense. If you want to come up with cool names each time, like Apple did by naming operating systems after big cats, that’s fine.

You just shouldn’t have two very different things with the same name.

I had cautioned against it, but they also named the tablet a Kindle…a Kindle Fire. Now, these are two very different lines of hardware, that do different things (although there is a fairly small overlap). People were confused: they were complaining that the “new Kindle” wasn’t easy to read in bright sunlight. They talked about “upgrading” from a Kindle 3 (or Kindle Keyboard, or whatever they called it) to a Kindle Fire…that’s like upgrading from a baseball bat to an avocado. ;) They just aren’t in a direct line.

Beyond that ,we have all of Amazon’s uses of the word “Cloud”. You have the Cloud Reader, the Cloud Player, the Cloud which is your archives stored on Amazon…and now, Cloud Collections (which don’t appear at the Manage Your Kindle site…which I think is what many people think of as the “Cloud”).

I’ll suggest a simple guideline, which I used to tell people when I helped them with database design: two things which do different things shouldn’t have the same name. :) I would tell them not to have two “Accept” buttons on the same screen, for example.

Customer Education

In my “day job”, I do a lot of training, and that can certainly involve education (although they aren’t the same…training has do with modifying behavior, which often requires knowledge…education is just knowledge). Amazon, unfortunately, doesn’t do a very good job in letting people know about things.

When a new feature is introduced (like Cloud Collections), I’ll see massive confusion for days…even years. It may be something people would love (at least parts of it), if they knew the intended use…but Amazon never seems to explain that.

I certainly don’t mind (in fact, I enjoy) explaining the features, as I did here:

However, I have to figure it out pretty much by trial and error. I can’t just go on to an Amazon Help Page and get a scenario based explanation. Typically, even the features aren’t explained there.

Somebody at Amazon knows the use cases for all of these features: when they are good, and when they aren’t. If they didn’t, they couldn’t get built.

Maybe the thought is that they’ll be replaced soon anyway, so why spend the time and energy…but that doesn’t make sense to me. Even the basic concepts of what is stored on the device and what is stored at Amazon could be explained better.

I still see people (quite frequently) worrying that if they remove a Kindle store book from a device, they won’t be able to read it again.

Has Amazon ever given people a simple explanation of Simultaneous Device Licenses?

Before you release a significant update, you should prepare a communication piece that explains the “why” of it. What is the context? What’s the advantage? What adjustments will people need to make? I’ve taught change management, and I always tell people that the first thing you say is what is not going to change.

If you are going to change the organizational structure in a business, the first part of introducing that should be, “Nobody is losing their jobs.” I’m putting it bluntly, here, but that’s got to be in the message before you say what is going to change…otherwise, people are just waiting to hear if that is going to happen, and they don’t hear anything else until that is addressed.

Similarly, updates should reassure people first.

Then, they should tell people why changes were made…and what the advantages are.

Lastly, they should tell people how to use the new features.

That’s not the only place we could use more information. It stills stuns me that they don’t list the clipping limit on a book’s Amazon product page. That’s important information: if you can only “clip” ten percent of one edition of a book, but one hundred percent of another, that might affect your buying decision…and satisfaction.

Choose Your Own…pretty much everything

My third one here is going to be the sense I have that Amazon thinks everybody wants the same things…and that, of course, it is easier for Amazon if there isn’t a lot of variety out there.

Sure, if you let people change their “screensavers”, there is a risk that something goes wrong every once in a while. That might have a Customer Service expense associated with it.

However, people have made the buying decision to get a different device just because they couldn’t have that! There is a bigger expense (or loss) associated with that.

I remember consulting with people who wanted every possible access to Help removed in Microsoft. They didn’t want people finding out how to do things on their own, because it would make it harder to support the technology, since there would be more variety in the field. That seemed counter-productive to me: it would require more tech support for simple things…and simple things are more common.

We don’t get to make decisions about whether we want to upgrade or not. We don’t get to decide about whether we want to have local Collections or Cloud Collections (or ideally, both).

I kind of doubt it, though. All they did there was making something available somebody else had developed.

The corporate philosophy seems to be that everybody is the same…having one color (or maybe two) of a device is fine, having one organization of the menus is fine…okay, they let you change the name of the device, which people love to do, but we could have a lot more flexibility.

Those are three big areas of philosophy where I’d like to see Amazon make a change. I do love Amazon, and am extremely impressed to their adherence to their basic tenets (selection, service, price). I’m not asking for any of those to be compromised: I just see room for improvement.

How about you? Are there philosophical changes you’d like to see made at Amazon (not specific hardware/software changes)? Do you agree with mine, or am I being focused on things that bother me, but don’t bother you? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Wouldn’t it be nice if supporting your favorite charity was that easy? Especially if you could give them financial support without giving them any of your own money (although that can certainly feel rewarding)?

Your charity will get 0.5% of your purchase…spend $100, and they get fifty cents.

There’s really not that much more to it.

Amazon has done things with charitable giving before, but I like how easy this is…and how they have so many charities available. I used to sit on the Board of a somewhat obscure group, and it showed up: they say they have almost a million organizations.

Amazon will hold on to the money for up to four calendar quarters. They’ll try to contact you to get you to register (which is free). If you don’t register after that time, they’ll distribute the money to other charitable groups.

Not every product is eligible, and the ones which are will be marked on the item’s Amazon product page.

I did a quick check: it looked to me like Kindle hardware was, but I wasn’t seeing Kindle e-books which were (although I didn’t check very many). I did specifically check a book published by Amazon, in addition to others, and didn’t see the information. The

Amazon again changes things in a positive way, in my opinion. This could get a lot more money (read: opportunity) to these organizations which have been recognized by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) as being non-profits (some types are excluded).

One other thing: I know some of my readers are Amazon Associates. Your current links will not direct people to this site.

I checked with Amazon on this, and this is part of their reply:

“You can easily link to the AmazonSmile home page or a product detail page by using the following format to construct your links:

To make your link to an items detail page functional, replace ASIN with the 10-digit ISBN or ASIN of the product, and replace your_Associates_ID with your Associates ID or Tracking ID.

The ASIN is listed on the product detail page at Amazon.com under Product Details. Your Associates ID and Tracking ID can be found on the left of your screen when youre signed into Associates Central. Your Associates ID will be listed under Signed in as.”

An organization can both be the beneficiary of someone shopping and get a referral fee…that’s explicitly okay.

I do have a few things I’d like to highlight:

There is no cap on the donations (Amazon will not stop donating because a certain dollar value is reached)

There are no deductions for administrative fees

This is free both for the shoppers and for the receiving organizations

The donations actually come from Amazon, not from the shopper…so the shopper does not get a tax write-off

Organizations can opt out, if they want

While you are shopping, you’ll see a banner at the top reminding you of which organization you chose. You can click or tap “Supporting” there to make a change

You are going to get to http://Smile.Amazon.com in your browser (on a computer, tablet, or phone). I don’t believe you can do this while using the Amazon shopping app at this point, or when shopping directly from a Kindle (unless you use the browser there)

Please consider this option during the holiday season…and I can certainly see organizations themselves (many of which buy things from Amazon) shopping the site.

Here’s my suggested new motto for them:

“Shop ’til it helps!”

:)

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Like this:

This was inspired by a recent comment by Edward Boyhan, a regular reader of and commenter on this blog.

Point 1: Amazon clearly wants to have exclusive content. Some rightsholders seem to be getting comfortable with making such exclusive deals (see, for example, Kindle Worlds: Amazon mainstreams fanfic).

Point 2: Digitizing a book isn’t easy. I’ve done it myself. There are several techniques:

Scan the book, then run it through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software

Have someone retype the book (this tends to be more accurate than OCR, at least when I do it)

Have someone read the book into speech-to-text software…again, this tends to be less accurate for me than “brute force” retyping it, although it’s gotten better. It is relatively slow…

However, it can be made easier with better equipment (both scanners and software), and skilled users.

So, how about this?

Amazon offers a service where they will digitize a paperbook (p-book) for the rightsholder.

In exchange for that, Amazon gets exclusive distribution of it…that could even be limited to a year.

I think a lot of publishers might jump on that for the “long tail”, for books that are not new and might not even be in print, but are still under copyright and still licensed to someone.

Amazon would be paid for it in part by the attractiveness of the exclusivity. The publisher benefits because it would cost them a lot of time and effort to digitize some of these books…and Amazon could do it well, adding Active Table of Contents (where you can click on a chapter title, for example, and jump right to that chapter).

Certainly, people would complain that Amazon is “controlling the world’s literature”, but the book would still be available in paper (if it was).

This would not fall into the same murky legal issues that Google did with its scanning project (the legal discussion of that has been going on for about eight years, I think). The rightsholder would be licensing it (which is another parallel with Kindle Worlds).

Of course, the rightsholder might not have the e-book rights from the author or the author’s estate. If this was available, though, I think those might be more easily negotiated.

If the rights have reverted to the author, I’m not sure that they could allow Amazon to scan the p-book…the publisher of the p-book might have control over some elements of that. However, Amazon could also do this with paper manuscripts the authors might have.

Perfect system? Nope, but I think this could greatly accelerate the conversion rate, and grow Amazon’s prominence even more.

Of course, Apple would have the resources to counter it…and I might not be happy if there were Apple e-book exclusives of books I’d like to read. :) I live with that possibility now, though…it’s happened with Barnes & Noble, for example. That’s why putting a year-long limit on it might be worth it for Amazon…just for the public relations. Hm…could they continue to get a cut of the book when it was distributed by other e-book retailers, if they had initially digitized it? Fascinating possibility…

This is all just off the top of my head, so I’d be interested in your feedback on it. I also hope I’m setting some mental wheels turning at Amazon…

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